A Global Sand Mining Crisis

Country:

China

Author:

Vince Beiser
Grantee

Land reclamation works are on-going at this area of Tuas, Singapore's westernmost area where a new massive container port—the world's largest in the next 30 years—is being built. The port authority is using materials dredged from the nearby seabed and earth excavated from tunneling work on a subway line to cut use of sand by about 70 per cent in the building of this pier—which will be one of four eventually. Singapore has been short of sand for its sizeable and continual land reclamation and construction…

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Concrete. Glass. Silicon. Our civilization is built on the most important yet most overlooked...

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Fishers face sand dredges in Hamashu village, Lake Poyang. Image by Vince Beiser. China, 2016.

According to Vince Beiser, a grantee who has been uncovering the global sand crisis, China has used more cement in recent years than the United States did in the whole of the 20th century. Beiser explains how the construction boom is causing widespread environmental damage in an interview with WNYC Radio.